Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said calls to defund police departments will be rejected by most of the public.
“I am all for social work and mental health,” McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said Monday on the Senate floor. “But call me old-fashioned. I think you may actually want a police officer to stop a criminal.”
He called the Minneapolis City Council’s plan to defund its police department “outlandish” and “nonsense.”
McConnell said police should not be “lumped in with the very worst examples of heinous behavior.”
Critics of the police are calling for defunding in several major cities, including Washington and New York City.
Nine out of 13 members of the Minneapolis City Council announced Sunday they would defund the police and replace it with an alternative public safety plan.
Minneapolis has been upended by protests and rioting following the death of George Floyd in police custody. Floyd, a black man, died after a white police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, ignoring Floyd’s pleas that he was unable to breathe.
“Even if some left-wing leaders fall for this nonsense, I have a feeling the American people are too smart for that,” McConnell said. “They know what happened to George Floyd is totally abhorrent. They also know that riots and looting are unacceptable. And they know that well-trained law enforcement officers are an important part of creating safe communities, not something to defund or abolish.”
